Monday, 10 December 2012

30 Day Horror Challenge-Day 22: A frightening child actor

For the next 30 days (or whenever I stop being lazy and finish it), I will be giving my fingers short bursts of exercise by completing the 30 Day Horror Challenge, found here. Hopefully it will give you a bit of insight into what horror is for me. Don't forget to check back every day for a new installment.

Day 22: A frightening child actorThis is a pretty tough one. The obvious choice is the kid from Pet Sematary and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, but I thought I'd try a less obvious choice (as has been my wont to do for the entire '30' day challenge), so I am going to go with Daeg Faerch, the young Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's Halloween remake. In a role that was always going to be questioned by Halloween fans, Faerch holds his own and brings an intensity that ranges between sympathetic to all out rage. We are given a look at his troubled childhood, showing us where the darkness began, and we are on his side all the way, from abuse father, to schoolyard bullies. It makes it all that more conflicting when we see him begin his viciousness (which I will refrain from going in to, for those who might still check out the flick). When the boy is institutionalised, we see the poor kid drift further and further away from us and from reality, as he grasps to understand what he has done. Even though we have flat out seen him be a cold-blooded murderer and know he is mentally deranged, we still feel for him as we see him etch closer and closer to the Michael Myers we all know. Through an exploitation by his doctors, and the loss of his mother, the only one who was there for him, we see him become nothing more than The Shape.